MONTHLY

Since "explore" is such a broad word, I took a page out of Ali Edwards' book and brainstormed some monthly themes I could play with instead of just flouncing around willy-nilly to try and, well, explore explore.

I'll link the category here as the year goes on, to more easily find that particular theme in all my rambling.

(I'm prone to both flouncing around willy-nilly and to rambling.  As if you haven't figured that out yet.)

THE THEMES

JANUARY:
Notebooks, journals, logs and diaries


I'm completely obsessed with all of these things.  Making books, logging things, planning, journal-keeping, art journaling.  If it's a notebook, I probably already love it.

FEBRUARY:
Cloth & Stitching


Sewing has, historically, caused me grievous injury.  But after a class with Brave Girls Club (Soul Comfort, for the interested), I'm obsessed with simple embroidery and making patches.  And then I found Jude Hill's Spiritcloth and nearly lost my mind.  I can't wait to explore that in more depth in February.

MARCH:
Stones


Y'know how there was always that one kid you knew who looked like s/he had giant bulbous legs because there were so many rocks in her/his pockets?  Yeah. I was that kid.  It's really never stopped.  Rocks, minerals, crystals, rockhounding, all of that.  Give me a bag and a pile of rocks and I can entertain myself indefinitely by befriending the whole pile.


APRIL:
Coyote (and totems)



Trickster doesn't always mean evil, despite what Marvel would have you believe.  (Loki wasn't really a bad guy, mythologically speaking.  Just kind of...misguided sometimes.  Ahem.)  Coyote, Crow, Anasazi.  Most mythologies and archetypal stories have a trickster component/character, and since I'm all about the canines, I'm looking closer at Coyote and his brethren this month.


MAY:
Bikes and Bods



I don't live in my body half the time; I live in my brain.  And since I love bicycles and cycling, I thought I'd take a month to get back in this skin I'm in.  We'll see how that goes. :)


JUNE:
Food & Plants



Plants as guides, gardening as a Thing, and eating local.  Because plants.  Also apothecary.  And maybe some communing with trees in the forest, because forest.


JULY:
The Wild



And this is where I go outside.  A lot.  And howl at the moon when nobody's listening.  Or maybe when they are.  You run with the wolves, you occasionally get thought of as a nutjob howling in the forest.  I'm okay with that.


AUGUST:
Drawing & Sketching



On location, in my house, every day, just because.  Possibly some wordless entries and lots of pictures.  We'll see.


SEPTEMBER:
Words, Writing, and Storytelling



Stories make us human.


OCTOBER:
Symbology



There are themes that follow me around and show up in everything I do.  Eyes, hands, houses, stars.  And universal symbols, like the ones that show up in indigenous art and tarot, for example.  Juicy stuff.


NOVEMBER:
House & Home



Is home really a place, or is it a condition?  And speaking of condition, it's time to get my living space into a better one.  And decorate, though my first inclination is to throw my hands in the air and give up before I start.  (So not a decorator.)


DECEMBER:
Myths & Fairy Tales



If I could only study one thing forever, I'd seriously consider myths and fairy tales.  And draw them.  And rewrite them.  And use them to understand history.



EDITED, DECEMBER 31, 2016
My fatal flaw, it seems, is thinking that time is infinite.  For some reason, despite the fact that years fly by with an alarming frequency, I still subconsciously hold the mistaken notion that I can literally do everything.

Let us just say that my theme idea?  Didn't go so well.  I found that I couldn't accurately predict with any accuracy where my motivations would lie in a particular month, and trying to force a theme where there was no motivation was an exercise in futility. :)

That said, I'm keeping ahold of this list, largely because these are fun, and they are all things that I'm interested in, clearly.  I may do something with it in the future.  They may become words of the year, as STORY morphed into for 2017.

We'll see.